


weep, little lion man

by and_hera



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Leo Fitz Angst, Post-Episode: s05e14 The Devil Complex, Self-Hatred, bus kids got mad issues, so glad that’s a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:46:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28847775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/and_hera/pseuds/and_hera
Summary: Simmons has always felt like she’s too big for her own body, like she should be some giant creature that could know everything and see everything and understand everything. If Simmons had one wish, it would be to speak any language, and if she had a second, it would be to have a honeymoon. Simmons is smart, is bright, she’s got a PhD, but she couldn’t figure out that her Fitz, her husband was- was-or, Daisy, Simmons, and Fitz in the aftermath of the Doctor.
Relationships: Jemma Simmons & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Leo Fitz & Jemma Simmons & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Leo Fitz & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30





	weep, little lion man

**Author's Note:**

> THAT SURE WAS AN EPISODE, WASN’T IT.  
> so uh... trigger warning for blood, discussions of The Whole Episode (definitely the whole operation with daisy), a lot of self-loathing on fitz’s part, and some pretty messed up thoughts about mental illness.  
> just for the record, fitz’s opinions of himself are NOT my own. fitz’s opinions of himself are deeply flawed, because he is not doing well!  
> title from little lion man by mumford & sons because you know. [gestures to the lyrics]  
> i hope you enjoy!

Daisy feels like she’s sleepwalking. The only sensation she can really feel is the tingling behind her ear. Fitz tells her what to do, and some part of her must hear him, because she does as he says. She moves the Gravitonium. 

They don’t have rooms in the Lighthouse. It’s been a week since they came back from the future. They simply haven’t had the time to sort out living quarters. Usually, everyone finds themselves camping out wherever they’ve been working all day. Mack sleeps in the chair next to Elena’s bed. Jemma and Fitz are usually outside the makeshift med station, curled up on two chairs shoved together. Daisy doesn’t know where May and Coulson go. Probably nowhere together. (Nothing’s been the same since Coulson told them he was dying.)

Daisy sleeps by the main room they all work in. There are some chairs that recline back slightly when you sit in them and hey, she’s slept in worse places. 

It’s the same room she was in when she saw Fitz and Fitz punched the computer and sent her downstairs to fix the cameras which is where he cut off her airflow until she passed out—

She decides that she isn’t going to sleep in that room tonight.

Is it even night? Is it time for them to sleep? Fitz put his hands over his head and Jemma (far too gently) led him to a makeshift prison. (Of course he’s the first one to get a proper room and bed in this place.) Daisy thinks that she should check her watch, but Fitz made it, so she throws it on the ground instead.

She would use her powers to destroy it but Fitz gave her those, as well. She stomps on it again and again like a toddler throwing a tantrum.

The Lighthouse doesn’t have any windows. Daisy hates it, because she can never tell what time it is just with a glance. When she would look at her (now thoroughly crushed) watch, it always took her a moment to translate that time into where the sun would probably be in the sky. Much easier to just look out a window.

No windows in the Lighthouse. It could be four in the afternoon or two in the morning. Daisy decides she’s going to find a place to sleep, dammit. That’s what she was _trying_ to do a moment ago.

Sleepwalking. If she held up her hands, she probably wouldn’t be able to tell right from left. If she held up her hands, she probably would see tell-tale bruises on her wrists standing out from her too-pale skin in the shitty lighting. (She has no clue where her gauntlets are.) Daisy doesn’t know where she’s walking, but her legs seem to know where they’re going, so she trusts them.

She opens a door without knocking. It’s a room full of papers and a few personal belongings. There’s a postcard from Tahiti, tacked on the wall like a joke. There’s a picture of Melinda May.

Coulson’s room, obviously. He isn’t home. He doesn’t know what happened. Daisy wants to tattle on Fitz like Coulson’s her father and Fitz is her older, scary brother who was mean to her again.

Not again, actually. Fitz has never—Fitz _wouldn’t_ , would he?—hurt her. Fitz has always been kind and been a good man and a better friend. The Framework was jarring simply because it wasn’t him. That wasn’t Fitz. Sure, the Doctor wore his face and had his voice and his father and his same smile when he was being sarcastic. (The Doctor smiled like that a lot. He never looked genuine unless he was being cruel.) But that didn’t make him _Fitz_.

After the Framework, Daisy had thought that it was a testament to the man Fitz is today. A good one. If it only took one regret to make him into the Doctor… well. The Doctor was something Fitz had the potential to be, but wasn’t. 

Daisy blinks and she’s sitting on the floor in Coulson’s room. She doesn't remember sitting down. She wishes that Coulson were here. She wishes that May were here, she wishes that Jemma and Fitz weren’t married, she wishes she had someone to talk to who would understand. She wishes Lincoln were here.

You know, she thinks, this is karma. For Hive. 

Because, didn’t she Quake him and didn’t she say cruel things to him under the guise of friendship? Didn’t she manipulate him and play him and hack into his systems? This was the same. It wasn’t but it was. Maybe if Daisy hadn’t been stupid and hadn’t hurt all her friends then maybe just _maybe_ she could have spared them all the pain of this. Maybe Lincoln wouldn’t have died.

The future is unchangeable, Fitz always argued. Fitz doesn’t regret what he did to her. He was himself when he finished the job. Daisy runs her fingers over the hastily and shittily applied bandages on her neck and tries her hardest not to tug at them but she does. When she pulls her fingers away they are stained with blood.

Fitz was her best friend. He saved them from the future. In the rare moments where they (DaisyJemmaFitz, the three-headed monster) had a moment to breathe, Fitz told them that Robin, little Robin, didn’t send him to the future with the rest because he was meant to save them.

Daisy feels a tear run down her cheek and doesn’t bother to wipe it off. Is this what saving them looks like? Is this how they’re going to change the future? Daisy has her powers back and she’ll become the Destroyer of Worlds because she’s never been good at impulse control and she’s never been able to bite her tongue. She bites it now until she tastes blood. It’s the only part of her body she can really feel, aside from the bruises and her neck. Nowadays it seems like the only thing Daisy is made out of is pain.

Sleepwalking. She puts her knuckles against the cold stone floor and pushes herself up. Coulson isn’t here and won’t be back for a while and May is with him and she’s going to have to be a big girl, dammit, c’mon, Daisy, get it together. You’re about to step out into that big, mean world and you’re going to have to match its meanness if you want to survive. 

Daisy shakes out her hands and walks back into the corridors. She doesn’t know where she’ll sleep. She’ll find somewhere, probably. She’s always been good at scavenging. She’s always been homeless, really. Find one place and it’s gone again. Find a group and then one of them cuts into your skin and watches you bleed and talks to someone you can’t even see.

When Daisy said she would never forgive him, she meant it. And when he said he didn’t think she’d be the only one, she savagely hoped he was right.

* * *

Fitz and Simmons have been married for four days. They got married three days after they came back from the future. They got engaged while standing in a ring where Inhumans were supposed to fight to the death, and she told him to marry her, please, and he kissed her in front of everyone. Sure, it was a bit fast, but also it wasn’t. Simmons already has made her ring into something of a fidget toy, and she knows Fitz has done the same. She sees him spinning it between his fingers while he sits in the cell with the yellow light on the bed.

They’ve been sharing a bed since—hell, since Maveth. They weren’t even together then but she would wake up and she wouldn’t want to be sleeping alone so she would go to his room in the base where she knew he would still be awake and working on his monolith simulations on his tablet (since he was regularly kicked out of the lab by Coulson around two) and she would ask if he minded having company. He always said no, he didn’t mind. And it would get him to sleep and she would hear him breathe and feel better.

(She thinks she knew even then that Will was gone. She wanted to get him back but she knew there really wouldn’t be anyone left. Jemma Simmons is a smart woman. She’s managed to preserve her hope, though.)

They aren’t going to share a bed tonight. First night since they got married that they won’t do that. Admittedly, that isn’t saying much.

Fitz is sitting on the bed in the cell and spinning his wedding ring between his fingers. Simmons is running her right thumb over the gems on the top of hers. She doubts that Deke got diamonds, because she doesn’t think Deke knows what diamonds are, but they certainly look like it. She could check to see what her ring is made of, but she won’t.

Fitz can’t see her—she’s standing behind the one-way mirror—which is probably for the best, because she’s crying and she doesn’t want him to know that it’s his fault.

Because—because it happened again. Simmons knows what happened while she was away (and she regrets leaving, she does, but she also doesn’t because she knows that if she had stayed she would have never left and she needed to go to become someone stronger than she was at the beginning) and she knew that while this wasn’t the same thing, it was something similar. And Simmons’ perspective is a little skewed, because she’s been in love with him for a lot longer than she’d admit, but she knows that something needs to be done. And she knows that no matter how much she loves him, love might not be the only way to get him out of this.

She wholeheartedly believed it was an anomaly, because it was her greatest fear. The Doctor. Her Fitz, her husband, turned into someone who didn’t care and didn’t love and had no ounce of empathy in his heart. Fitz has always loved with his heart out on his sleeve. That _wasn’t him_. So she had no trouble believing that he was running through the station and ruining things. 

(She has an new greatest fear now. It isn’t the Doctor. It’s that he and her Fitz are the same.)

But Fitz—the Doctor—slipped up. He took too long. He let Simmons think about it for too long and then she _realized_.

When they were in the future, Fitz told Simmons that he had an escape plan. Simmons trusts him more than she trusts herself, hell, more than she trusts anyone on the team, if she’s being honest. She let him do it. And then the Kree came in and she looked to Fitz, her fiancé, because she trusted him to have the solution.

Fitz pulled a string and sliced all four of their heads in half. And that- that wasn’t an escape plan. It got them out of there, and it scared off more Kree from following, but that- that scared Simmons more than anything. Fitz had gotten smarter, gotten more sure in himself over time. They weren’t even cleared for combat until S.H.I.E.L.D. fell to Hydra. Simmons was proud of him for overcoming his brain injury and learning to be brave and smart and the best man she knows.

But this was calculating. He didn’t even seem to care about it.

Was that him? she wonders. Was that the Doctor, whispering in his ears?

She hopes not but Jemma Simmons is a smart woman and can put two and two together. (Jemma Simmons has managed to preserve her hope but that doesn’t mean she always believes in it.)

Fitz stands up in his room and starts to pace around. Is the Doctor in? Or is Fitz still home? Simmons doesn’t know, Simmons doesn’t know, Simmons never seems to know until it’s too late. Yes, she figured it out, but was it in time? No. The androids came in and held guns to her head. The androids that Fitz programmed held guns to her head and Daisy was tied up to a table and Simmons had to watch her Fitz, her husband—was it him?—dig into her skin.

Simmons has always felt like she’s too big for her own body, like she should be some giant creature that could know everything and see everything and understand everything. If Simmons had one wish, it would be to speak any language, and if she had a second, it would be to have a honeymoon. Simmons is smart, is bright, she’s got a PhD, but she couldn’t figure out that her Fitz, her husband was- was-

Fitz holds out his hands in front of himself. His hands don’t have any blood on them. The Doctor had the foresight to put on gloves. In a moment of sick anger, Simmons wishes he hadn’t, just so Fitz could see physical proof of what he’s done. Because Daisy is her friend, and used to be something more, and Simmons loves Fitz (Simmons _married_ Fitz!) but she loves Daisy, too, and she doesn't know if Daisy will ever be the same again. 

“What did I do,” Fitz says to himself. Simmons knows he can’t hear her, but she wants to talk to him. Does she want to reassure him? No. No, she can’t, because Daisy stumbled off as soon as Fitz was taken away and Lord knows where she went or what she’s feeling. But she can’t shout at him; he’s her husband, and no matter what she was told about couple’s fights being healthy, she doesn’t want to yell at her Fitz, her husband, when he’s like this. 

Sometimes being a peace-keeper is perfectly exhausting. Simmons wants to collapse. She’s still crying.

She wishes there was anyone else here to- to- to help? To solve her problems for her? Fitz is the problem-solver. Fitz is smart and always finds the solutions. Simmons loves to learn and she’s good at what she does but she doesn’t learn for the sake of _doing_. She just wants to learn, to take in every scrap of information about everything that she can. 

Fitz is smart and loves science and loves learning but he does those things to help others. He learns in order to save the world. 

Did he save the world again today? Simmons—despite how much she loves Daisy—thinks so. But was he _right_?

Simmons puts her hands on the glass of the one-way mirror so she can’t see Fitz’s face. Simmons, being a doctor, isn’t very squeamish, but sometimes she needs to not see another face again and covers up whatever she can with her fingers. Sometimes she puts her hands over her eyes like a child. She can’t leave—leaving Fitz alone doesn’t sound like a good idea, because what if something happens?—but she can’t look at him. 

She can’t see his face but she can see his hands. He makes them into fists. 

“What did you do,” Simmons says to herself. Fitz unclenches his fists and she sees crescent shapes from his fingernails digging into his skin. “Oh, Fitz. What do we do now?”

He moves and Simmons moves her hand with him. He sits back down on his bed. They aren’t going to share a bed tonight. Simmons sees him start spinning his wedding ring around again. 

He very gently takes it off and puts it on the small table in the middle of the room. In his wedding vows Fitz said, “I don’t deserve you,” and everyone aww-ed. Daisy cried. Simmons looks at her hand on the glass, looks at her own ring. 

She keeps it on. (Jemma Simmons is a smart woman but she has managed to preserve her hope. )

* * *

Fitz can’t fall asleep. He’s tired and he’s- he’s-

He shakes his head like it’ll shake out his thoughts. He hasn’t heard the Doctor talking to him since earlier and he doesn’t want to but he also hasn’t felt like himself. 

As far as Fitz can tell, every person is made up of different selves. Everyone is a different person around specific people and when they’re alone. Masks. Especially in a spy organization. That isn’t anything to be worried about, though. Fitz knows he’s something to be worried about. 

See, everyone is made up of all their masks, and some of those masks might not be great, but when you put them with the others, it’s okay. When Fitz is himself, he might be calculating sometimes, but it’s okay. You have to be. 

That’s a lesson he’s learned. Leo Fitz has always tried to be kind but you can’t always be and you’re going to do things you regret, like it or not. 

But the point is: Fitz is Fitz until he has to do something he doesn’t want to. And then the part of him that decides that he can’t be this smart for nothing, that he can’t let the world end and do nothing about it, kicks in and when it does, it leaves the rest of him helpless. It’s like he was just dragged out of the ocean all over again. 

He’s been stuttering a lot more lately. When he feels the Doctor’s breath on the back of his neck, he pulls his sweater tighter around him. 

Fitz knows he has to get this under control. But he just- he just- he hasn’t had the _time_ , you know? He snaps his fingers even though he isn’t even talking out loud. 

You know, part of him can usually get the words. When he was seeing Jemma walking around beside him, she knew what he wasn’t able to get out. The Doctor knew the solution. But he just can’t- he can’t connect the dots. He can find the solution to any problem but he can’t actually use it if he doesn’t find the solution to his own mind soon. 

Fitz was in the Framework and then Aida was after him because she loved him as much as any new human could and then he was left alone, alone, alone in a jail cell, the Doctor breathing down his shirt collar, reminding him that if he’s going to escape this unscathed he’s going to have scathe everyone else. He was alone and then he was in the future and then he told Jemma that they should get married and she told him the same and they got home and they got married. 

No time for a break. No time to think. Just focus, focus, focus. Sometimes Fitz gets into this mode where he’s unshakeable, just doing doing doing and he’ll get the job _done_. He’s so tired and he thinks that if he breaks his focus for one second he’ll die. If he stops moving he’ll die. 

He lost focus today. He lost control. He looks at his hands and he looks at his wedding ring on his left hand. Fitz doesn’t deserve Jemma; he knows he doesn’t. Nothing he could do in this life could make up for what he did in his other one, and now he’s ruining this one too. 

Spins his ring around his finger. He never wore rings before, you know. And it’s not like he ever expected to get married, especially not to Jemma Simmons. But he works so much with his hands, and so does she. Fitz works with his hands and didn’t think he would ever wear one, but now that he has one it’s a strange feeling. It belongs there. He barely notices its presence when he’s busy and when he isn’t, it’s all he can think about, because he _married_ her. (She married him!)

(Why did she marry him?)

The cell’s lights are yellow and it makes him feel like he’s going to be sick. He might be sick. Christ, what did he _do_ to Daisy? (He knows exactly what he did to Daisy and knew the whole time he was doing it.) She’s- she’s never going to forgive him. Daisy Johnson used to be his best friend, especially back when Jemma was undercover, hell, even when she was new to the team. Fitz and Jemma have always been best friends, the duo, referred to as one single person for so long that people assumed they were married already. But Daisy was his _friend_ and he was never in love with her but he always loved her. (DaisyJemmaFitz, the three-headed monster.)

She’s never going to forgive him. Fitz doesn’t know if Jemma will ever look him in the eyes again. Because she made the choice to marry him ( _Why?_ ) and within a week of that choice, he hurt their best friend. It was to save the world. And Fitz knows that Jemma understands that and that she understands in the long run, it had to be done. Jemma is the smartest person he knows. She understands. But that doesn’t make it any easier. It doesn’t make him any more lovable.

Fitz has never been an easy person to love, though, so that’s not a change. He’s obsessive and stays up all night and takes things literally when they’re supposed to be jokes. He gets caught up in his work and forgets to reply to texts or go to dates. Fitz has never been very good at being loved; it’s a shame, because he’s always finding himself loving.

The Doctor isn’t there with him, he isn’t. He must have had enough today. Fitz is alone and he is himself. A shiver goes down his spine. Fitz doesn’t have a sweater to pull tighter, no slightly-scratchy texture to bring him back to himself. (Say what you will about his Marauder disguise; the scarf was fantastic.) He spins his ring around his finger instead. His hands aren’t shaking, and he feels bad about that. Shouldn’t they be, after what he just did? His hands aren’t covered in Daisy’s blood and that also feels like something wrong. He’s always been better with his visuals and his memory has never been great, even before the ocean incident. He needs the reminders.

Fitz puts his face in his hands. He wonders if Jemma is outside his room—his cell—and he wishes that she is. Then he hopes that she isn’t, because no one needs to see him like this. Especially not his wife. (His wife! Words are hard but that word isn’t.)

He did this, and he isn’t asking for forgiveness. Fitz feels like that’s an important thing to note. He doesn’t _need_ anyone to forgive him. Hell, Fitz hasn’t forgiven himself since he woke up from the Framework and he doesn’t plan on doing so anytime soon, because what he did—what he himself did, because no matter what anyone says, the Doctor is who he could have been, and Fitz is to blame for him—was unforgivable. He doesn’t _want_ to be forgiven! Daisy has every right to be angry at him forever.

Fitz wonders if he caused the end of the world by doing this. He saved it right now, but he wonders if he caused it, too, just later. Time can’t be changed. They’ve tried and tried again. Daisy Johnson was known the world—or, rather, Lighthouse—round for being the Destroyer of Worlds.

Robin told him that the reason he wasn’t sent to the future was to save them all. Is this it? Is this it? Is this the moment? 

Fitz realizes that he stood up. He realizes that his hands are balled up in fists. He unclenches them and sits back down on his bed. He twists his wedding ring.

Jemma’s probably taken hers off, he thinks. Jemma probably will never tell him, and will wear it every time she visits, but she’s probably taken it off because they only were engaged for a few days in the future and they only have been really dating for a year and it was all too fast because God, look at him! Fitz isn’t a self-pitying man, but he’s a practical one. He knows how this works. 

Fitz puts his ring on the table in the middle of the room. He won’t allow himself to mess with it any more, and he won’t spend any more time worrying about it. Leave it alone, Leopold, he thinks, in a voice that sounds like his father’s. Keep your hands still.

“What did I do,” Fitz says. (He knows exactly what he did and he regrets all of it but he doesn’t regret any of it.) He doesn’t know where they go from here. He doesn’t know if the Doctor is going to keep showing up and he doesn’t know how to stop him. (He already has so many ghosts following him around; what’s one more dead thing? A dead version of himself. At least, Fitz can certainly hope that it’s—he’s—dead.)

Fitz leans his back against the stone wall. The bed is so uncomfortable and he doesn’t think he’ll be able to sleep if he isn’t sharing with Jemma. He hasn’t been able to in a while, unless forced to by pure exhaustion. Because if he isn’t with her he’s searching for her, and Fitz will do anything to get her back or to get to her. (The prison cell, yelling at the television, the world spinning in circles around him, the Doctor telling him to get the fucking job done, Leo.) 

Fitz looks at his ring on the table. He thinks about Daisy beneath his fingers. What did he do? (He knows.) But the world isn’t ending yet.

The world isn’t ending yet. He can almost see the Doctor smile.

**Author's Note:**

> again very important for you to know that what fitz thinks about himself is BAD and NOT GOOD. i am begging for aos to let him go see a doctor that is not also his wife. i also tried my best to be vague about his struggles because it’s very clear that aos did Not do a lot of research while writing about his psyche, and i’m no professional either, so i just tried to stick to how the show did it as best i could.  
> thanks for reading! please leave comments and kudos if you enjoyed, and come talk to me about the show on twitter @lcvelaces :)


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